Some Thoughts on Philip Seymour Hoffman

The actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died this weekend of an apparent drug overdose – a tragedy, for anyone who saw any of his performances (I can’t list them all off, but some of his more spiritually-themed films included Magnolia and Doubt, and he most recently was in the second Hunger Games film as Plutarch Heavensbee). He may have been the finest actor of our time. Certainly one of the finest.

In any case, I learned a lot from him, and I blogged about it on Sunday. The fine folks at Christ & Pop Culture picked it up. Here’s a little of what I said:

I always had the keen sense that this was not “just acting” to him. He was, emphatically, not a movie star. Acting was less job, more vocation or calling, almost a cross to bear, as wild as that may sound. He said as much in interviews – talked about how painful the work was to him, how it hurt to inhabit another person that way.